Throughout the occupation of Vietnam by France, small
resistance leaders and groups sprang up to gather the people against the ruling
French authority. As the French
suppressors became more and more ignorant of the problems of the common
Vietnamese citizens, organizations were formed with the hope of overthrowing
the foreign rulers. (8) One leader, De
Tham, led a thirty year resistance effort against the French, and although he
was assassinated in 1913, his goal of Vietnamese independence was eventually
realized decades later. (9)
Although the French conquest of
Vietnam was never readily accepted by the Vietnamese people, decades of misrule
only strengthened the desire for Vietnamese independence. As time went on, organizations like the
National Liberation Front (NLF, or the Viet Cong) gained support and grew in
size. (10) The number of revolutionists
grew steadily during the turn of the century, during a time when De Tham,
considered a legend in both his culture and in France after his time, operated.
(11) The son of two revolutionist parents
who were killed (directly or indirectly) by the French, De Tham was raised by
his uncle and learned to despise the foreign government. The French began to fear De Tham as a
tactician, organizing guerilla units and proving himself and his band a threat
to the colonists. However, despite his
success as an anti-French fighter, he would eventually bite off more than he
could chew and would pay the price. (12)
More than a decade after gaining
a considerable land holding in 1894, De Tham and other Vietnamese nationalists
conspired to execute French guests at a banquet being held. He was unsuccessful and was hunted by the
French and eventually assassinated by a group of three of his Chinese
followers. Although he died in 1913 and
his guerilla warfare group disbanded, his ideology lived on. Decades later, Ho Chi Minh, the great-nephew
of one of De Tham’s allies, rallied troops with the anti-French ideology as De
Tham had done with the ultimate goal of Vietnamese independence. (13)
No comments:
Post a Comment